Nerve Endings
by Artemis Rampant
Summary: Five understands human biology well enough. It's stitchpunk biology that trips him up. 2x5


**A/N: I know, I know, I'm supposed to be working on NaNo. DON'T KILL ME, OH GODS OF WRITING. I just couldn't let this plot bunny slip away. Five is so freaking adorable, oh my god. **

"It doesn't make sense," Five muttered to himself.

He'd found an interesting book in a pile that the twins had knocked over. It was labeled _Biology - Junior High School Level_ in big white letters, superimposed over a picture of some sort of green, scaly animal. In the front cover was a messy list of names and years and the condition of the book over time; there were messages scrawled around it, too, phrases and jokes that he assumed were lewd but that he didn't have to vocabulary to comprehend. There were some of these on pages throughout the book, too. But the original text itself was large and colorful and easy to follow, with big pictures. It was a treasure trove of information. He'd spend hours in it, learning about the world as it had been when it was still beautiful and full of life, learning about the strange incredible intricacies of the human body.

And then he'd come to a passage on nerve cells. He read the explanation, on how they carried impulses felt at skin level to the brain, where it could be processed, and one would understand that the thing they were touching was hot or cold or smooth or rough, et cetera. He read about the purpose of pain, why harmful things would create a negative sensation in order to keep you from repeating the action (from this he was able to infer the purpose of pleasure, remembering the bit on procreation a few chapters back, but the book skirted around this issue). He examined diagrams, of the cells, of the human body and how the nerve endings stretched through it.

Five poked at his burlap skin, feeling the cool metal of his finger bounce against the weave of fabric. He definitely felt that. "But I don't have nerve cells," he said aloud, slowly. He couldn't possibly. He didn't have a brain in a human sense, no fleshy pink mass of computations and electrical impulses. There was no way his solid metal bits, his hands and feet and eyes and even his gears inside, could have something so small and delicate threaded through them. And yet he _did_ feel, he felt everything; life would certainly be harder if he didn't.

Two walked in at that moment. "No, my boy, I daresay you don't."

Five jumped. "Don't sneak up like that," he protested.

"Sorry, sorry. What is it you're reading?" He walked over and took a cross-legged seat next to Five on the wide expanse of paper.

He smiled. "It's this incredible book, it explains just about everything about the world, and animals, and _humans_, I can't bring myself to stop reading it." Then his smile faded. "But this passage is confusing. Here, take a look." He gestured to the page, the diagrams.

Two leaned over to read, taking a few minutes to absorb all the information. When he was finished, he frowned. "I don't see what's so confusing. This book is an incredible find. I was reading something on nerve cells earlier, but it used such complicated language that I had no idea what it was talking about -"

"No, no, it's not the material. It's the...application." He reached out and touched Two's leg lightly, running a finger along a seam that held a patch to his knee. "You felt that, didn't you?"

Two jolted, ever so slightly. "Yes," he said, softer, an odd look in his eyes that Five couldn't even begin to understand.

"W-well," he continued, suddenly unsure of himself, "it's weird, right? Because, um, because I'm pretty sure that we don't even have the _mechanism_ for physical sensation, much less..." He lost his train of thought, ending lamely, "You see what I mean?"

"I see," Two said. He reached out slowly, almost hesitantly, and ran a hand down the side seam of Five's leg, ending gently at the metal joint of his ankle. "But you felt that?"

Something inside Five skipped or twisted or just shut down, and suddenly he understood Two's abrupt mood shift with crystal clarity. "Y-yeah," he said. "I felt that."

"So," the older stitchpunk continued. He leaned forward, shifting his weight so he was kneeling scant millimeters away from Five. "Perhaps we just..." he touched Five's face, skimming the edges of his eye patch, "...don't have nerve cells."

"W-we," Five attempted, "we've already es-established..."

"Shh," Two said, effectively shutting up the younger creature. He leaned forward, tilted his head ever so slightly, and pressed his lips against Five's.

Five's mind buzzed, scrambling his thoughts with a spark of something indescribable, and he brought his arms unthinkingly around his mentor's neck. But then, another thought surfaced, and he pulled away.

"But Two," he said urgently, "we can't procreate, either."

The inventor just laughed and kissed Five again, sending any and all remaining logic to settle far, far away from their incoherency.


End file.
